A Better Friend
by RoseFrederick
Summary: Even when they'd been dating, Rose had known she wasn't going to spend her life with Mickey. There's no denying that he was a great friend, though, and that hasn't changed. Post Doomsday.


**A Better Friend**

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A/N: Written for Chocolate Box 2017 for AceQueenKing to the prompt of Mickey comforting and helping Rose adjust to being stranded in Pete's World.

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There's no way Rose could have known that day at Torchwood was going to be any different than any of the other death-defying adventures she had with the Doctor. The two of them together had been through so many impossible things, beaten so many odds. She'd been sure, even as she'd been sucked towards the void and the alternate Pete Tyler had miraculously appeared to save her – she'd been so sure it couldn't really be the end. Not really.

Oh, in the moment when she knows the void is sealing itself up in the other world, she is completely heartbroken. Yet as the days passed in Pete's World, somehow life there didn't feel real and permanent. Months went by, and she got a job at Torchwood working with Pete who wasn't quite her father and Mickey who wasn't quite the ex she remembers. She watched Pete and her mother fumble into a relationship with each other and learn they were expecting a baby. She saw how much Mickey had grown into himself and reconnected with his Gran.

It's wonderful to see people she cares about so happy. Enough so that she can let it fill a little bit of the hole in her heart, but mainly she can pretend to be okay because she knows on some level she's only waiting.

Then she has a dream, leading her to that lonely beach. It's what she's been waiting for, and she's so sure the Doctor must have found a way through to find his way back to her. It was what he did, what they did - make the impossible happen. They were meant to be together, forever, out among the stars. That's why it isn't until the Doctor suddenly disappears on her, words half-spoken, that being stuck in another universe really becomes truly and honestly real to Rose.

Now, the wait is over – or more truly, the wait is not a wait, it's forever. It's different, after. Rose had been able to function because she had hope, but now that hope is gone. She folds in on herself, she can't help it. Her life had been nothing for the first nineteen years, and now the rest of it stretches out before her just as empty. Sure, she has a job at Torchwood instead of a shop, but how can that possibly compare to having the universe set just outside her door? How can the empty space at her side compare to being with the Doctor?

Pete isn't her father, and as much as they have a weird connection, he can't really help her. He doesn't know her, he doesn't understand, and she can tell he's not particularly eager to try. Her mother, she secretly believes, is happy with this turn of events. Rose can't help but remember that angry, fearful speech Jackie had given right before it all went wrong. How she wouldn't even be Rose Tyler anymore, wouldn't even be human, if she stayed with the Doctor. So all her attempts at soothing Rose's broken heart just feel like they're the tiniest bit fake, and Rose can't bear them.

In the end, it's Mickey she can't ignore. Oh, she wants to. He'd been so clingy and jealous of her relationship with the Doctor, she wants to be able to dismiss him the same way she can her mother. But while Mickey was here for those years that passed in months in her world, he changed. It was a process that had already begun when he had been blamed for her disappearance and continued on through adventuring in the TARDIS. In the time they've been apart, though, he's come so much further into his own, having such an integral part to this other Torchwood and getting a second chance with his Gran.

He's not looking to cling to her or get her approval anymore. The two of them had really been so young and naïve when they dated. It seems like a million years ago, somehow, that Rose and that Mickey. They've both changed so much in so little time, but Rose is fairly sure they'd have always ended up being only friends. Even when he was her boyfriend, the best part was how good of a friend he was. He'd always been able to make her laugh and cared about her, but he'd wanted to be her world in a way that just didn't suit either of them in the long run. Now they both understand that without even having to talk about it. He's also the only one here who can even begin to understand what living with the Doctor was really like, and how that changed her into the Rose she is now.

It means he knows her well enough to know what buttons to push. He cajoles her in to going back to work again, by prodding her about what the Doctor would think about her giving up and losing her sense of adventure, going so far as to do not-at-all convincing imitations of the Doctor himself that are not nearly so funny as Mickey thinks they are. Still, it works, and for moments at a time, she finds herself enjoying the puzzles of alien technology. He convinces her to go out for lunch and try things that are unique to this world, like weird flavors of crisps. It's not exactly exploring the universe, but when she says that he just rolls his eyes and reminds her just how many stories of weird foods from distant planets she'd tried to interest him in on her visits home.

At first it's just enough to get her to stop spending all of her time in her room. Getting her into Torchwood, getting her to take meals with her family. Getting her to work on one project or another. Getting her to talk. Getting her to interact with the baby when it comes and she suddenly has a new younger sibling named Tony. No matter how many times she locks the door to her room and refuses to come out. No matter how many times she calls him Mickey the Idiot and has to apologize, cringing in embarrassment, later. Mickey doesn't give up on her and he doesn't let her give up on herself. He drags her back into the world, some days by baby steps, and some days while she's kicking and screaming. He's implacable, and she sometimes finds herself in a strange kind of awe at the man he's become.

The thing that really makes a difference, though, is the day he slaps down a set of plans in front of her and says if she really wants to get back, then why the hell isn't she working on it? The plans are for a dimension canon. There's no guarantee it will work. There's a good chance it won't, considering the fairly basic plans he's given her and what she knows about how the jump discs they used to use worked. But it's a place to start. A place to hope again. It's exactly what she needs and Mickey is the one to give it to her.


End file.
